If you’re a guy, more often than not, you like ‘em young. If you’re a girl, you like ‘em older, wealthier, and more powerful. If you’re Mark Sanchez, the 24-year-old bachelor quarterback of the New York Jets, you definitely like ‘em young. Early on during the “Hard Knocks” days, 39-year-old backup quarterback Mark Brunell saw the signs.

“I’ve got a daughter that’s only five years younger than him (Sanchez was 23 at the time), so that’s really weird,” Brunell said, according to the Washington Post. “No, that won’t happen. He’s not meeting my daughter. She already thinks he’s cute. She saw a picture of him, but that’s not happening at all. I like the kid, but I don’t like him that much.”

A superstar quarterback (in terms of stature and popularity, NOT in terms of talent) would never even think of going after a teenager, right? They go after hot twenty-somethings they find at the bars and clubs, known to baseball players as “slump busters.” Brunell’s kid, though, was just 18 (judging by his math), and while he may have been joking, he’s also a father so he meant it when he said he didn’t want Sanchez near her. He was right.

According to a report by Deadspin (who else?), Sanchez has allegedly carried on a physical relationship with a 17-year-old HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT from Connecticut he met on New Year’s Eve. (Yes, how does a 17-year-old even get in a New York City bar?). In case you’re wondering, the age of consent in New York is 17, and in New Jersey (where his home is and where the encounters allegedly occurred), the age of consent is 16. What Sanchez may have done with that girl is entirely legal. It just seems oh so dirty.

The encounter according on a dark and stormy night (No, really.) at the quarterback’s home near a golf course in New Jersey. She showed Deadspin thesepictures of his room to prove she was there. She also said the last time Sanchez sent her a text message was at 2 a.m. on Jan. 24, just hours after his Jets lost to the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game.

Side Note: The New York Post went on to name the girl and expose her Facebook picture, but because her daddy is very rich and her lawyers are already after Deadspin, I’m going to protect her privacy completely. I don’t think she personally is the story at all. The story about Sanchez and an anonymous 17-year-old high school senior is just as powerful as if you knew her name.

Tangent: I also want to make a distinction between Sanchez and Ben Roethlisberger right now: by all accounts, Sanchez and the girl’s encounters were consensual. Big Ben, on the other hand, allegedly assaulted an unwilling college student inside the women’s bathroom of a trashy bar in Georgia while two of his “bodyguards” stood by the doorway. No comparison should be made at all between Sanchez or Roethlisberger. They are totally different situations.

Anyway, the Jets have already distanced themselves from the Sanchez rumors, better known as yet another P.R. disaster: